


Diminished

by AlexFlex



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, gimli/legolas if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23393530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexFlex/pseuds/AlexFlex
Summary: The elves had been given the choice: diminish or travel to the West. This is not what Thranduil had imagined it to be.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 20





	Diminished

This ‘Age of Men’. At first it had been delightful, we enjoyed once again the delights of the Greenwood. Eryn Lasgalen it was named, for a new hope. We walked once again in cool glades, danced under dappled sunlight and in the trees loved and sang and delighted in the forest. The trees were still weary but had a new health and vigour to them. The beasts returned, fear of spiders having kept so many away these long years.

Every time he blinked there was a new king in Dale. Legolas had sailed with his ridiculous dwarf. He sometimes wondered if they had made it to those vaunted shores or if the Valar had sunk the ship just past the dock at the impertinence of concocting such a scheme. 

Most of the other Sindar had sailed long before. We had come to the forest to govern these wild Silvans who could not rule themselves. For so long he had thought that cord which bound him to this forest and to the people was duty but he came to know it for love. Love for their fierce and vital embrace of the days as they came. The Silvans were not living in that glassy-eyed Nolodor half-waking state. If they were so ethereal and other-worldly he did not know why they had stayed so long when they could have shipped off to the Western shores at any time. He had come to love his people, he knew his skills were not actually needed any longer, that their deference was a gift for his own ego. They ruled their own hearts, each elf choosing for themselves whom they would or would not follow into battle and a name, a title, an order were not things that would sway them. 

He stayed and watched more and more men spread out through Dale. Laketown expanded its reach and soon they joined together. Little love had he for Dwarves but even he began to notice when he heard that heavy tread less and less often. The ravens sent him messages that the Mountain grew more and more silent and that the excess heat from the furnaces no longer warmed their nests. 

Then one day he woke to find they had diminished. He was caught under a white expanse which he knew to be his bedsheet. With the dagger he never removed, even in sleep he cut his way through. He gave silent thanks for enchanted doors as he made his way through to the throne room and waited. Yes. It was as he feared.

Living a life this size turned out to have unexpected benefits. The amity they had ever shared with the forest creatures continued and for the first time, he saw his forest from above as he soared over the canopy on the wings of a thrush. Eventually, butterflies, moths, dragonflies and other winged creatures agreed to allow themselves to be harnessed to an elf, for a short period of time, to aid them in travel. Their glamour prevented overenthusiastic birds of prey from making a mouthful of a new kind of flying snack. 

For the first time, Thranduil began to join in the Silvan dances. With the petals of a flower he would create a new sweet-smelling garment and inside the closed rosebuds elleth would place their new babies to rest. He now drank the nectar of flowers and faithful Galion tried to ferment this but with little success. Thranduil found, however that he no longer needed to be numbed by drink. The boredom of countless yeni in the forest was assuaged by now seeing it from a different perspective. Sitting on the head of an elk and swaying and ducking as the branches zoomed by was more exhilaration than he had felt for years, even in battle. 

Occasionally they would fly into the caves. Their discarded clothing and books turning to dust and overgrown with creepers and plants. Nothing could be carried out to serve its previous function, but rolls of thread were repurposed for stringing bows. Lengths were cut from what were once fine robes. Tiny arrowheads were made from the hair fastenings we had laid aside in our sleep that fateful night.

And there were more and more Men. Sometimes walking in the forest, sometimes cutting down the trees. He could not remember the last time he had seen a Dwarf. Some of the men had a dwarvish look about them but they were not Dwarves. They did not love the stone or craft with skilled hands.

Some of his people began to grow weary of this new life. Some even faded. Their bodies would just disappear. Some grew bored. They had even on occasion stolen human babies. They had nurtured them and played with them but could not keep them safe in the forest and more than one had been swept away by the river or fallen off a ledge. Thranduil had had to exercise command, which he had not done these many years and forbid human infants being brought into the forest by his folk. 

He thought of everyone he knew and loved, now across the sea. Would his wife have forgiven him? Surely, she would have understood why he needed to stay. How fared his sons? Did the Dwarf yet live in Valinor, where all hurts were eased? Would Mithrandir be finding new ways to meddle? He snorted as he wondered how those Nolodor would be entertaining themselves with no one to look down their noses at.

And Men grew ever more numerous. A band of Hobbits had arrived in the forest saying this was now the last place of refuge. The Men had overrun their homeland. Some of them occupied the remains of the palace, others dug their own smials. The new arrivals staved off the boredom for a time, then even the Hobbits grew few, and the last of them packed up, saying they needed to move to somewhere safer, and he never saw them again. 

The boredom was setting in again. Some of his people had even allowed some human children to capture their images with a flash of light, as they danced and sang. Thranduil did not even have the heart to scold them, and they simply retreated further into the forest. One day the sounds of thunder crashing came from the site of the old palace and he saw the rocks tumbling as men in metal wagons worked in teams to haul them away. 

More and more trees were cut down and the animals fled. Some of his people faded. Some said they would try and make a boat and sail to Valinor. He never heard from them again, mayhap they found success. 

The forest was now gone. Thranduil had never been one to venture from the forest, and continued this way even now that it was gone. Some of his people, left to find other places of sanctuary. A small loyal band remained. The areas they now inhabited were close to the homes of Men, where Men would cultivate a few vegetables for their own consumption or one or two sickly flowers for their pleasure. Sometimes, Thranduil would stand at the windowsills and watch the Men as they sat watching screens in their hands or mounted on the walls. 

He was so tired now. Maybe he should just sleep now. Just lay down to rest for a minute.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
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